Saturday, April 20, 2013

Be Sinless to sin less in a sinful world

"I passed on to
you what was most important and what had also been passed on to me. Christ died
for our sins, just as the Scriptures said.” 1 Corinthians 15:3

A man was walking up a hill when he saw a boy on a bicycle.
He was pedalling up the hill against the wind, strenuously and painfully when
he saw a trolley car going up the hill. The boy rode to the back of the trolley
car and laid hold of the bar at the back. And he went up the hill like a bird!

Like the boy, we so often struggle against problems and
temptations, trying to sin less to please God. We lost the important message
that Christ had already died for our sins. We can only succeed in sinning less
when we put on the robe of righteousness of Christ and remember that we are
sinless in God’s eyes. We can only live as new creations in Christ by the power
of the Holy Spirit.

Sin is our separation from God. As long as we are not in communion
with God, we will sin as we are living in a fallen world. We will sin as long
as we feed ourselves with a spiritually unhealthy diet of bad news in the world
and do not take time to feed on the Word of God and keep our thoughts on
whatever is right or deserves praise: things that are true, honourable, fair,
pure, acceptable, or commendable.” (Philippians 4:8)

Martin Luther struggled to overcome his guilt and terror of death by his spiritual performance of the medieval rites and practices of his
Catholic faith. He shared his struggles:

“Although I lived a blameless life as a monk, I felt that I
was a sinner with an uneasy conscience before God. I could also not believe
that I had pleased him with my works……. I was a good monk, and kept my order so
strictly that if ever a monk could get to heaven by monastic discipline, I was
that monk. All my companions in the
monastery would confirm this….

And yet my conscience did not give me certainty, but I
always doubted and said, “You didn’t do that right. You weren’t contrite
enough. You left that out of your confession.”

As he studied Paul’s letter to the Romans, he found a
profound and liberating revelation in the truth of Romans 1:17: “The just man
lives by faith.” He was set free from the obsession with his spiritual
practices. He came to the realisation that the performance of good deeds and
religious rituals cannot restore our relationship with God. It is only though
our faith that Christ will clothe us with his own righteousness. This was also
John Wesley’s “heart strangely warmed” experience on Aldersgate day that filled
him with the fire of love to share the gospel of God's love with much power in the United
Kingdom and beyond.

Jesus died to set us free from our performance anxiety by showing
us the Love of God. Understanding the meaning of the resurrection of Christ
gives us the power to transform our lives and our struggles. This was the
testimony of a man who was stricken with cancer and had to endure months of
treatments and major surgeries as well as the death of his father. His wife
thought that that must have been the worst year of his life. However, he
realised that he had been comforted with a profound sense of Christ’s presence
throughout those difficult days. So he told his wife, “You know, it may have
been the best.”

To be a Christian is not trying to sin less but to live the
sinless life of Christ who is in us. We do so by faith as we commit our lives
to Christ and enthrone Him as King in our lives. Only then can we be free from
guilt when we fail to be more loving in the eyes of others and from self-righteousness
when we think we have been more loving than others. Only then will our good deeds be
the fruit of the Holy Spirit rather than our selfish and self-centred attempts
to win God’s favour.

Let us live our lives rooted in the good news that God loves
and accepts us as we are. We are called to live as ambassadors for Christ and
children of God for we are sinless when we put on the robe of righteousness of
Christ. So let us proclaim the good news: